Food producers go hungry: report

Sarah Whyte and Vince Chadwick

TOP food companies fall short in their social and environmental policies in developing countries, a report by aid organisation Oxfam has found.

The report found none of the world's 10 most powerful food and beverage companies adequately protect developing communities where they employ people and source goods. Also, few voluntarily revealed where they got their raw materials.

Nestle and Unilever - which produces Lipton tea and Rexona deodorant - won praise for efforts to stop child labour and invest in small-scale producers. But the report found the companies had much to do to protect the rights of female workers and prevent land from being seized from poor farmers.

Combined, the 10 companies generate revenue of more than $1 billion a day and indirectly employ millions of people.

''Companies have been making a lot of money out of the fruits of labourers who are very poor and hungry,'' Oxfam Australia chief executive Helen Szoke said.

''To realise that the people who produce our food are actually the people who are going hungry is a bitter irony.''

A separate Oxfam survey of 1000 Australian consumers found 54 per cent did not trust the food and beverage industry to do what they say they do.